A four-inch fragment of glass, smooth to the touch from nearly two decades of nervous friction, never leaves John Wholihan's pocket.

He moves his thumb along its edge before closing his hand. It's a repeated process, passing from hand to hand.

Wholihan admits that, to anybody else, it doesn't look like much. But he knows it was a part of something much bigger than himself.

“I want people to know how many people are still getting sick and dying. So many people.”

JOHN WHOLIHAN, 9/11 FIRST RESPONDER

On Sept. 11, 2001, Wholihan spent hours on the pile of wreckage from the World Trade Center collapse. He searched with his fellow first responders, finding seven people who had lost their lives.

He breathed in clouds of ash and dust. He couldn't see more than 2 inches in front of his face.

In the days following the Sept. 11 attacks, Wholihan made it a point to pick up that token — a piece of window from one of the fallen towers — and he never put it down.

When he substitute teaches at Seacrest Country Day School, it’s with him. When he hangs out with his friends, from the Fire Department of New York or not, it’s with him. And when he attends yet another funeral for a friend who also conquered the pile, it’s with him.

It’s less a reminder and more a small comfort after what he lost that day: His friends, his country’s sense of security and his health.

John Wholihan holds a piece of glass on Monday, Sept. 9, 2019, that he picked up from the rubble of the World Trade Center in the days after 9/11 and has carried with him everywhere he goes since then. The glass fragment is smooth on all sides, worn down from years of being handled, a physical reminder of what Wholihan and his fellow first responders experienced on 9/11.(Photo: Alex Driehaus/Naples Daily News USA TODAY NETWORK - FLORIDA, Alex Driehaus)

Wholihan, 63, was on the last ferry to Manhattan from Staten Island, where he was living in retirement, when the second plane hit the South Tower. All he had was his helmet.

No coat. No mask. The masks wouldn't come for days.

He was joined by 50 other first responders who were going across Upper New York Bay toward something they couldn’t imagine. He lost many friends that day. Many more died in the following years.

“I want people to know how many people are still getting sick and dying. So many people,” Wholihan said.

Wholihan, who moved to Naples in 2002, is one of more than 4,000 people in Florida registered with the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, according to the status report the fund issued in February. The number of registrants in Florida follows only New Jersey, which has 8,614 registrants, and New York, which has nearly 76,000 registrants, according to the report.

According to a September report issued by the Victims Compensation Fund, more than $5.5 billion in compensation decisions have been rendered since the fund's most recent iteration. Of that, the same report indicates, more than $4 billion has been distributed to New York City-based first responders.

A lengthy legislative battle culminated in a reauthorization for the fund that runs until 2090. It authorizes $10.2 billion to be used for the fund over the next 10 years with unspecified additional money to be paid through 2090.

Getting sick

When Wholihan thinks of 9/11, he thinks of the first responders who died — only because they went to work — and didn't get to see their children growing. “We were all just doing our job,” he said.

“We were told it was safe.”

JERRY SANFORD, RETIRED FDNY PRESS SECRETARY

The scars Wholihan carries extend beyond the psychological toll.

With esophagitis, gastritis and sinusitis, Wholihan said he’s lucky compared to other first responders and victims he knows. For one, he’s alive.

Wholihan is not alone.

Jerry Sanford was the public information officer for the North Naples Fire Rescue — now known as the North Collier Fire & Rescue District — on Sept. 11, 2001. A former public information officer with FDNY, he flew back to New York to work as a press secretary with the department.

From left, John Wholihan, retired firefighter for New York City Fire Department; Jerry Sanford, retired New York City firefighter and public information officer for the North Naples Fire District; Sam Cadreau, retired lieutenant of the City of Naples Fire Department; and Cpl. Vincent Martino, retired detective with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, take a moment of silence during St. John the Evangelist's Mass of Remembrance on Sept. 11, 2011. Greg Kahn/Staff(Photo: Greg Kahn, AP)

Now 81, Sanford was 63 at the time of the attacks. At times, he was at Ground Zero two or three times a day.

“We were told it was safe,” he said of the air they were breathing.

Instead, Sanford developed the cancer adenocarcinoma in his lungs. Twice.

East Bradenton’s Garrett Lindgren was working, too, as part of FDNY’s Rescue Company 3. By the grace of traffic, he was about a mile away from the South Tower when it fell, potentially saving his life.

He and his team got off the truck, he said, to zero visibility. They didn’t want to drive the truck any closer because they were afraid they’d run over any victims.

“I had no idea what we were going into,” he said. “It was supernatural. Unreal.”

Lindgren worked 11 days straight before he went home. During that time, he fell on the pile — what he and others called the mountain of rubble at Ground Zero — which caused a back injury that forced him to retire at 42 in January 2002.

He eventually moved to Bradenton. The warmer climate eased some of his orthopedic problems, but his health continues to worsen.

Garrett Lindgren after a job before he retired.(Photo: Courtesy of Garrett Lindgren)

“I share it because I want people to know,” Lindgren said. “This is just me that’s sharing this, but thousands of people are going through what I’m going through or worse.”

Among his medical conditions, Lindgren said he suffers from chronic sinusitis, acid reflux and asthma. His immune system is compromised, he said, which means a common head cold might worsen into bronchitis or pneumonia, taking him out of action for six, seven or eight weeks.

Lindgren also struggles with toxic neuropathy. His legs, arms, hands and feet are numb all the time, he said. It complicates even taking his dog for a short walk. A slight shift in balance might send him toppling to the ground.

But he does not feel sorry for himself. He’s grateful.

“It is what it is. I’m alive. I have a wonderful, great family that loves me,” Lindgren said. “I have a newfound love of life, if anything.”

Lindgren receives financial assistance from the Victims Compensation Fund, as does Sanford, who completed his second treatment in 2012 and has been in remission since.

“It’s certainly keeping me from losing my house or something, because I don’t know how much it would be costing me out of pocket,” Lindgren said. “The federal funding for this is making it possible for me to be diagnosed as things come up and to receive the care that’s needed if there’s care that’s available.”

Unspoken loss

Seacrest Country Day School’s head of school Erin Duffy, a New York City native, hired Wholihan fours years ago.

“We were walking in what looked like snow that was knee deep ... The air was crunchy.”

ERIN DUFFY, SEACREST HEADMASTER

The two had never sat down to talk about their experiences on 9/11. They've known each other for more than a decade.

“We’ve never even talked about it,” Wholihan said. “That’s how people are.”

Wholihan said most of his community in Naples doesn’t know he’s a retired firefighter, let alone that he was at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Both said a lot of bad memories keeps them from confiding in others or talking about it.

Duffy and her daughter Peggy walked home after the towers collapsed.

The South Tower collapses around 10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, in Lower Manhattan. Hijacked commercial airliners crashed into the towers.(Photo: Donna Wholihan)

“We were walking in what looked like snow that was knee deep,” Duffy said. “The air was crunchy.”

Wholihan wrote a column for the Staten Island Advance in 2002, which he said was the last time he spoke in detail about 9/11. He keeps mementos packed away.

He’s only talking now because he believes people are forgetting about the day he lost his friends. The day everything changed.

"John and all of those other guys who went onto the pile never gave what they were breathing a second thought," Duffy said. "There's a shift in how we understand our connection to other human beings."

When Wholihan walked back from the ferry dock on Staten Island, car after car stopped for him and asked if he needed help. He said that seems less likely these days.

Lindgren and Wholihan and Sanford all survived. They live with the scars of their service every day, often in ways limiting the extent of what they can do.

In spite of the long legal battle to extend the Victims Compensation Fund, the struggles first responders faced with their mental and physical health and the public's fading memory of the tragedy, each responder the Daily News interviewed said they would do it again.

“If I physically could, I would be the first person going,” Lindgren said. “Me, personally, and every guy I know from my job? We wouldn’t think twice.”

“We don’t think about it,” Wholihan said on responding to tragic events. “We really don’t. We just go.”

John Wholihan holds up a flag on Monday, Sept. 9, 2019, with the names of the emergency service personnel who lost their lives in service to others during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The list of names on the flag was current as of 2002 but has continued to grow as hundreds of first responders have died of health complications related to exposure to toxic chemicals on 9/11.(Photo: Alex Driehaus/Naples Daily News USA TODAY NETWORK - FLORIDA, Alex Driehaus)